Who would put five Intel Core 2 Q9400 processors in one case? Cooler Master’s engineers that’s who! Our engineers put themselves to the test by building a 5-in-1 system that has never been done before. Today, we are proud to announce that with a single Real Power M1000W we are able to power up 5 full mini-itx systems in a closed ATCS 840 chassis. YouTube Video Link.

The results of Whirlpool's 2008 Australian Broadband Survey are now available. The survey was conducted over a four week period — from 31 December 2008 to 1 February 2009, during which the survey was successfully completed and verified a total of 19,763 times.

AnandTech take an in-depth look at dual GPU performance and scaling, as well as releasing a second article focusing on triple GPU configurations. Some time has passed since the last time we studied the issue, and now that we've fully broken in our Core i7 system, 64-bit Vista, and recent graphics drivers, it's time to get to it.

TweakTown compare the VGA performance of Microsofts public beta of Windows 7 against Windows Vista. Today we want to see how VGA performance looks under the new Windows 7 in comparison to the now very well established Vista. We want performance to be close to Vista, but with Windows 7 still being in its Beta stage, we're not going to hold our breath.

HardOCP analyse F.E.A.R. 2's Gameplay Performance and Image Quality with some of the latest video cards on the market. F.E.A.R. 2 is here for all of you to get your Alma fix. But is Alma Wade the only terrifying part of the game, or will the performance make you want to crawl out of your skin too? We'll find out with seven of today's most popular video cards.

PC Perspective has published their NVIDIA and AMD professional graphics roundup. Both NVIDIA and AMD have updated their respective professional graphics lines in the last month or so and we sit down with a pair of Quadros and a pair of FirePro cards to see which has the ability to be the best performer AND which is the best value.

Bit-tech take a look at Microsoft’s BlueTrack technology and how it works. Microsoft's new Sidewinder X8 mouse incorporates its BlueTrack tracking engine, which boasts speeds and specs far in excess of those of laser or optical mice. Here we delve into the technology behind the numbers, and interview Microsoft on the technology and its future.

Guru3D has now updated its tweak utility RivaTuner to Version 2.24. Users can download the latest version here.

AMD updated their OverDrive utility to Version 2.1.6. AMD owners can download the latest version here.

Hmm, does our own Tesla Downunder have a challenger, in the form of Dr Zeus? I feel like I'm living in Gotham City with superheroes fighting in the streets. :)

If you liked the "Will It Blend?" videos, you'll enjoy these parody ones: blending The One Ring and lightsabres to start with.

Amazon have unveiled their Kindle 2 e-book reader. Apart from anything else, it's nowhere near as hideously ugly as the first one. More info here.

TKArena have an article about free child security for the internet. So first, let’s review the basics of educating a child about using the Internet and then look at twelve free pieces of software that filter to Internet for the younger audience. This allows you to do your parenting yourself, instead of, say, relying on your Government. ;)

MadShrimps compared seven Intel Core i7 X58 Motherboards. We put seven feature rich X58 motherboards for Intel´s latest Core i7 CPU to the test. Comparing performance, overclocking scaling in a multitude of applications and games. Which one comes out on top? Read on to find out!

Dopefish spotted this cool five watt Linux server. It's about the size of an AC to DC converting wall outlet plug, but is really a full SoC with a 1200 MHz CPU, built-in 512 MB Flash, 512 MB DRAM, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 support. More info here.

From wes: Through the end of February, Telltale games is offering a FREE Sam & Max or Strong Bad episode to new newsletter subscribers. Not sure exactly what that involves but there's more info here.

Today's timewaster is Cursor * 10, from von Stalhein, who says I particularly like the "Cooperate by oneself?" aspect of this game.. Me too!

Telstra, the company so many love to hate, yesterday has officially confirmed that CEO Sol Trujillo will leave the company on June 30 this year.The telco said in a statement that Trujillo and the board had agreed that now was a suitable time to transition to a new CEO, given the transformation kicked off by Trujillo in 2005 was "well advanced and on track". Trujillo met with the board over the issue yesterday.

With the departure of Sol Trujillo now official, Greens leader Bob Brown says that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should cap the excessive salaries of corporate bosses.Shareholders should have the power to curb salaries above $1 million and the CEOs of companies that benefit from government bailouts should have their packages limited to $5 million or 10 times the prime minister's salary, he said. The federal coalition, in contrast, paid tribute to Trujillo, saying he had made Telstra one of the world's most successful telecommunications providers.

Optus is trialling web accelerator technology for use on its 3G mobile network.In November, iPhone customers were transferred in batches to having their HTTP web traffic routed through the accelerator. Now the web traffic for all handsets is being routed through, achieving a 10 to 50 per cent improvement in downloading web pages. "Since we did it, we've been listening to customers," Smith said. "They've noticed the difference."

Apparently, a study shows that mobile phone texting improves language skills in children.Texting helps children as it exposes them to a variety of words, she says. She continues, "The more exposure you have to the written word the more literate you become and we tend to get better at things that we do for fun. What we think of as misspellings, don't really break the rules of language and children have a sophisticated understanding of the appropriate use of words."

And another study also shows that listening to podcasts is better than going to lectures.Students perform better on tests when they use podcasts to take notes—better, even, than simply going to class. Though a recent study stops short of saying podcasts can replace classes, it shows that they can be extremely useful in supplementing lectures.

Intel has not only been busy with manufacturing new processors but also with changing their logos.The new logo is much wider than the previous one and on the top right corner you can see something that looks like chip. Core i7 and Core 2 Extreme logos are black, while Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 vPro are blue and very similar. Many Centrino logos are all in white, and the top one is Centrino 2 inside, runner up is Centrino 2 vPro followed by Centrino inside and Centrino vPro inside. Itanium, Xeon, and Core 2 Viiv sort of didn’t change their format, while Xeon will come in new blue colour, probably for Nehalem based Xeons. New logos will be effective as of April 1st, the first day of Q2 2009.

It seems that Nokia is keen on getting in to the laptop industry.The world's top mobile phone maker Nokia is eyeing entering the laptop business, its Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in an interview to Finnish national broadcaster YLE on Wednesday. "We are looking very actively also at this opportunity," Kallasvuo said, when asked whether Nokia plans to make laptops.

Ray Chen, president of Taipei based Compal Electronics, seems to think that Microsoft may begin shipping Windows 7 as early as September or October.Microsoft Corp. may begin shipping its Windows 7 operating system as early as the third quarter, months before the software maker’s official prediction, a computer-industry executive said.

There's been an interesting development in the Great Firewall of Australia debate, with Senator Nick Xenophon withdrawing support for the idea. Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups".

It appears that yet again the prosecution has changed the "indictments against the owners of The Pirate Bay.According to Swedish publication the Local, the prosecution once again changed the indictments against the four men behind the Pirate Bay. Removed is now the sentence, “All components are necessary for users of the service are able to share files with one another” from the charges, though added at the same time was wordage saying that users would be able to both upload and store torrent files on the service.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has confirmed that Microsoft Office 14 will not be launched till 2010.Ballmer offered little explanation or context for the Office 14 delay, although he did say that the free OpenOffice suite had caused the company to lower the worldwide price of the suite. Ballmer's disclosure of the delay was actually made in passing. "From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year, there's a version of Sharepoint, there's a version of Exchange, there's a new version of Office Live," Ballmer said.

Telstra has offered to help iiNet in their legal fight against the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). The help has been in the form of advice from Telstra's legal team. "I've got to say, when I spoke to the lawyer there, he asked how can we help, and I said 'write me a check'," Malone joked. "He didn't quite agree with that one, but no, they're providing us with expert advice and advice to our legal team."

And there is more good news at iiNet with managing director Michael Malone today announcing that his company has posted a "net profit for the six months to December 31 of $11.4 million".iiNet managing director Michael Malone said the revenue growth was at the top end of the company's guidance, and that the company was on track to achieve its full year forecast of at least $400 million in revenue. "Our half year results reflect strong subscriber growth due to the continued success of Naked, the successful consolidation of Westnet and the increasing popularity of our innovative products, particularly our award winning Naked service," Malone said.

NASA officials have been left puzzled as to what caused their $273M satellite to crash 3min after the launch. The satellite launched this morning, and sadly failed just three minutes after launch, plummeting back to Earth. Shocked and devastated NASA program manager John Brunschwyler describes, "We could not make orbit. Initial indications are the vehicle did not have enough [force] to reach orbit and landed just short of Antarctica in the ocean. Certainly for the science community, it's a huge disappointment."

BMW is working on a new Intelligent Learning Navigation System that "learns the drivers habits to improve efficiency". The way the system works is by recording data on your typical daily commute as far as learning your route, road gradients, curves and braking points. The system also uses a camera to get a visual of your path. Once the path is learned, BMW claims the system could proactively reduce the power to your AC system to give you more power to merge onto a highway. At the same time power to the AC is reduced, the shift points for the transmission could be raised to provide better acceleration.

Virtualising people will be interested to know that Citrix XenServer is now free. XenServer, our enterprise virtual infrastructure platform is now free (including resource pooling and live relo), and we have announced Citrix Essentials for XenServer, and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V as our virtualization management portfolio that offers a rich set of automated functions that drive the compatible virtualization layers beneath - the free Hyper-V hypervisor from Microsoft, and the free XenServer Enterprise virtual infrastructure platform from Citrix. Finally, and most importanly, we announced a powerful go-to-market roadmap with Microsoft.

The Quake Live beta has been opened to the public, allowing you to play Quake III in your browser for free. More info here and there's a discussion thread here. Although it seems the queue to play it is about 8000 people long at the moment. :)

According to Dell’s Chief Blogger, Lionel Menchaca, initial versions of the Dell Mini 10 will come "with 1 GB “fixed” RAM, meaning it will not be upgradable."With its promise of a high-res, 720p-capable display and TV tuner, the Dell Mini 10 was the netbook that aspired to do more than just casual browsing -- hoping to step into the realm of multimedia. However, whatever multimedia that it will end up doing, it’ll have to accomplish it with 1 GB of RAM.

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the rumoured red Xbox 360 elite.Looks like that red Resident Evil 5 Xbox 360 bundle wasn't just some tripped out figment of your imagination. Just moments ago, the package popped up for Xbox Live subscribers, detailing a handsome red Xbox 360 Elite with a 120GB hard drive, Resident Evil 5, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and a few other odds and ends (like a handful of cables).

The music industry is at it again, this time demanding that ISPs block all bit-torrent file sharing sites.If the forces representing the music industry have their way, that will be the case. In its latest push against P2P, the music industry is demanding that Internet service providers block all torrent-based file sharing sites.

Mozilla is all for "Jailbreaking".Mozilla is now actively backing a movement that, if successful, would essentially nullify copyright infringement charges against individuals that ‘jailbreak’ their Apple iPhones – a practice that Apple considers illegal.

The nasty Conficker worm has recently received an update, dubbed “Conficker B++”.In response, Conficker B++ completely removes the need to check for updates, moving instead towards a structure that resembles a peer-to-peer filesharing network. A URL pointing to updated Conficker code – or a patched version of the Conficker binary – can be sent directly to infected machines through a pair of new backdoors that B++ opens.

A Polish hacker by the name of Marcin-PRV has managed to install and run a copy of Windows 3.1 on his Nokia N95.n what may well go down as the most awesome – and pointless – hack in smartphone history, a Polish programmer has succeeded in installing a copy of Windows 3.1 on his Nokia N95. As reported over on BetaNews yesterday, a hacker by the name of Marcin-PRV posted an article on Polish-language bulletin board FrazPC earlier this week which demonstrates a copy of 16-bit operating system Windows 3.1 running alongside the Symbian S60 OS supplied with the 'phone.

There's an interesting story brewing in the AMD world, where people reckon they have worked out how to enable the fourth core in a Phenom II X3 processor. It's no secret that X3's are X4's with one core disabled, but apparently with this BIOS trick you get a free 33% speed upgrade. More info here on Guru3D and here on OCWB.

Tech Report has a system guide, and so do Sharky Extreme. Today on Sharky Extreme, we've posted our High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide for February, where we take $2500 (USD) in search of the best AMD and Intel gaming configurations.

HotHardware have a DDR3 with i7 performance roundup. Today, we're going to look at some of these new kits and see if we can break down what memory-related aspects users should look for when buying an X58 / Core i7 platform. We've got kits from big names like Corsair, Kingston, and OCZ in the labs.

VR-Zone compared two heatsinks, the Cooler Master V10 vs. Xigmatek Thor's Hammer. We take a look at 2 new CPU heatsinks from Cooler Master and Xigmatek - the TEC-enabled V10, and Thor's Hammer, which features Xigmatek's Heatpipe Direct Touch technology.

Irish ISPs are the latest to feel extreme pressure from the music industry, to block sites such as The Pirate Bay. “We don’t support illegal activity on our network but this is an unprecedented agreement,” said Alex French of Ireland’s leading Wi-Fi service Bitbuzz. “Is the music industry planning to become Ireland’s de facto internet censor?”

Someone in IRC spotted this clever halloween costume. By using a travel DVD player strapped to my stomach, with video coming from a digital camera strapped to my back, it creates the illusion that I have a very large hole in my stomach.

The 2009 Oscar winners were announced a little while ago. Australians have been particularly interested in this one because of Heath Ledger's nomination for Best Actor. I'll avoid a spoiler, but if you want to see if he won or not, check out our 2009 Oscars thread in the Entertainment forum.

Microsoft is continuing to win friends and influence people by asking for money back from people it recently let go. "An inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment in severance pay by Microsoft," the letter states. "We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you."

The recent satellite collision could have an effect on the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. Before the collision, space junk problems had already upped the Hubble mission's risk of a "catastrophic impact" beyond NASA's usual limits, Nature's Geoff Brumfiel reported today, and now the problem will be worse.

XbitLabs compared video cards in Prince of Persia. Our today’s article will discuss the performance of the contemporary graphics accelerators in the latest part of a well-known gaming sequel called Prince of Persia.

ThinkComputers have a quick guide to installing Win7 from USB. If you installed Vista or even later versions of XP from a DVD you know that it was very time consuming. Why not speed up the process by using a flash drive to install Windows 7. Windows 7 is currently in beta and Microsoft is offering it free to anyone to try out until August.

Tech Report had a sneak preview of AMD's 6-core Opteron. With Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons gathering like a storm on the horizon, AMD today gave the first working demonstration of its potential counterpunch: a six-core Opteron processor code-named "Istanbul." Discussion here.

HardOCP have an entry-level PSU roundup. Following this successful strategy we have begun to notice a few more brands trickle into this range with some real quality offerings such as Seasonic, BFG, and others. Today, we have collected up a few more of these units to see what else has crept into this market segment over the last year or so.

Remember that this Saturday night (28th Feb) at Beyond Gaming (525 George St, Sydney) there's an overclocking event with loads of prizes, gaming, booth babes and free beer. More than just a competition, it’s an opportunity for all Australian overclockers to meet up. It’s completely free, but please register.

I'm not an expert on overclocking; however, this looks very impressive indeed. An XtremeSystems forum user has achieved a score of 20284 in 3DMark 06 on an Asus W90 notebook running Intel's Mobile Q9300 extreme (2.53GHz) CPU @ 4GHz as well as ATI's Mobility Radeon 4870 X2.

OCZ Technology, best known for manufacturing computer memory and power supply units, have released a new backlit multimedia keyboard called Alchemy Illuminati. “The Illuminati Keyboard offers multimedia consumers a host of features including rubber coated keys for comfort while both working and gaming, fourteen quick launch keys to better access to multimedia, and the choice of two backlit colours making it easier to make full use of the keyboard in low light environments.”

Nvidia is bringing their Tegra chip to the Android platform. Nvidia has allied with the Open Handset Alliance and Google to support the increasingly popular open-source Android software platform. Advanced graphics and better battery life on the way.

ZDNet Australia has posted their top 10 most likely list of candidates to replace the current Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo. ZDNet.com.au has conducted an international search, scouring the executive teams of telecommunications companies around the world for the right replacement. We've formed a shortlist of the 10 most likely candidates.

Microsoft is getting closer to releasing Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista."We continuously engage with our partners and testers on the development of service packs and we will track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for distribution," Microsoft said in a statement. "We will have more to share on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 SP2 soon and are targeting final delivery in (the second quarter of) 2009."

A couple of Republican legislators in the US have introduced legislation that will require internet service providers to retain user data for two years. For years, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has been pressing for legislation that would require Internet Service Providers to retain user data in order to aid law enforcement in hunting down child porn peddlers and downloaders. Last week, he introduced his most recent effort, and today was joined at a press conference in Austin by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sponsored the Senate's companion bill, to make the case for the 2009 edition of the Internet Safety Act.

Rumours about a new iPhone release from Apple have been gaining momentum in recent weeks, however, yesterday Apple has sent the rumour mill into overdrive after Apple Insider has reported that "Apple has cleaned out Samsung's supply of flash memory in recent weeks" and apparently they also asked Toshiba and Hynix to ramp up their flash memory production.

It seems that soon we may see Asus line of netbooks powered by Google's Android operating system.Asustek has allocated engineers to develop an Android-based netbook by as early as the year end, Samson Hu, head of the Taipei-based company’s Eee PC business, said in an interview yesterday. Asustek hasn’t decided whether to proceed with a final product because the project is still under development, he said.

According to an report on Digitimes, the Taiwan Government plans to establish a new DRAM company.The Taiwan government plans to establish a new DRAM company to be named either Taiwan Memory Company (TMC) or Taiwan Memory Inc. (TMI), according to industry sources. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is currently assembling a management team for the new entity.

Someone is in hot water after U2's upcoming 12th album, No Line On The Horizon, which is set to go on sale on March 3 has been leaked on to BitTorrent sites . Full CD-quality copies of every song on U2's upcoming album, No Line On The Horizon, have been leaked on to the web after Universal Music Australia accidentally put it up for sale on its online music store two weeks early.

Nvidia has hit out at Intel claiming the CPU manufacturing giant is running scared.NVIDIA has hit back at Intel's legal attempt to scrap its chipset licence, claiming it is all about trying to protect Chipzilla's flagging CPU sales. Intel claims that the four-year-old chipset licence agreement the pair signed does not cover CPUs with integrated memory controllers, such as Nehalem. It has taken Nvidia to court to settle the matter.

3 Mobile has announced that it will not be adding HTC's Android based Dream to its range. "We've been evaluating Android handsets as they come up, the latest of which was the Dream," he said today at the company's results for the year to 31 December. "We've decided not to range that." "You don't range a handset because it has a particular software platform. You range a handset because at its price point it's adding significant value to customers' experience over and above what other handsets you've got."

iiNet has agreed to bankroll the costs of filing a freedom of information request in order to obtain the panel of experts' National Broadband Network report. The FOI request was filed by online blog Tech Wired Australia, which received a bill of $3,632 to cover associated administrative costs. iiNet then approached the blog to cover the costs of the request. Tech Wired Australia's request comes off the back of the government's previous refusal to release the report.

For many years biometric scanners have been touted as the "next big thing in computer security", however, at this year’s Black Hat Security Conference in Washington DC, researchers from Vietnam have demonstrated how they were able to bypassLenovo's Veriface III, Asus' SmartLogon V1.0.0005, and Toshiba's Face Recognition 2.0.2.32, even with each program set for maximum security. Information on exactly which programs were bypassed by which methods is presumably contained within the team's full documentation, which is not available as of publication time. According to Dark Reading, a variety of attack vectors ultimately proved successful, including photo substitution (using a photo of the actual owner) as well as brute-force attacks in which multiple images of different people were presented to the scanner.

Google has won a court case against a couple who claimed that the search engine giant’s street view mapping service has violated their privacy.A ruling issued Wednesday by Judge Amy Reynolds Hay in a Pennsylvania district court states that Google's Street View mapping service is not an invasion of privacy. Judge Reynolds has dismissed a lawsuit against the search giant and has denied a request for injunctive relief that sought to block Google from publishing Street View imagery.

If you own an Xbox360 and can't stand the noise it produces when in use then this product may be for you; custom made Lian-Li XB-01B case.What Quiet PC has done is taken out all the innards of an Xbox 360, and implanted them into a custom made Lian-Li XB-01B case, made specifically to hold the Xbox 360 motherboard as well as everything else. Everything moves over. All the ports and connectors on a real Xbox 360 enclosure is on the Lian-Li XB-01B.

Canon has unveiled their entire line up of point and shoot digital cameras for 2009. Digital cameras have been around for many years now and have made their film based predecessors all but extinct as even professional photographers are now moving to high-end digital cameras. The migration from film-based cameras to digital units was much faster in the consumer segment. Digital cameras are always getting better, faster, and easier to use and Canon has announced its new line of digital cameras with ten different models to choose from.

Microsoft is fuming after a phone, running its Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, was "pickpocketed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona".The phone was on loan to Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo who was at the conference and testing it out, but it seems that it was in the hands of another Telstra executive at the time of the theft. If the pickpocket knows anything about technology then it is possible to make a fortune on the black market with the phone and its new operating system.

Asus is set to phase out 8.9" Eee PCs in 2009.Asustek Computer will completely phase out its 8.9-inch Eee PC netbooks in 2009 since 10-inch models are becoming the mainstream specification in the market, according to Benson Lin, president of Asustek's Asia-Pacific division. Of Asustek's 2009 Eee PC shipments, 10-inch models will account for 95%, while the other 5% will be 7-inch models for telecom service operators, Lin said.

Intel is also in the phasing out mood with the news that the CPU manufacturer is set to axe the Core 2 Extreme quad core chips by mid 2009. Intel has already sent out the PDN (Product Discontinuance Notice) for both the QX9770 and QX9650 Extreme Edition chips. As a very large majority of the enthusiast community most likely already has their hands on these chips, they probably aren't moving too many of them through inventory anymore compared to their new offerings for the Core i7's.

Bit-tech has posted a Core i7 Heatsink Group Test article.Now Intel’s new LGA 1366 socket and Core i7 platform has been on sale for a good few months, we’re finally starting to see a decent variety of coolers released that support Intel’s latest CPUs. We're also seeing the much anticipated mounting brackets for old favourites appear at e-tailers.

OCAU's Folding@Home team has been working hard this summer, but we still need your help. While the team has been contributing over 1.65 Million points per day, we still need your help to increase this number to stop us falling behind during this summer season.

The team is looking for Nvidia GeForce 8XXX, 9XXX and 260/28X/295 GPU's (ATI GPU's Too!) to help increase our output. If you are ready to start, then check out this thread for instructions. Don't have a GPU to spare? Folding@Home works on your CPU as well! There's a guide to getting started here. If you have Sony Playstation 3 you should already have the client pre-installed and ready for you to start producing!

So, if you would like to help scientists learn about diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta - possibly help find a cure for it and put OCAU back in the number one spot - then drop by the Distributed Computing section and see how you can be a part of it. Remember OCAU is Team 24!

PC Perspective tested OCZ’s latest Vertex Series of Solid State Drives. The OCZ Vertex series of solid state drives might be the most anticipated since the release of the Intel X25-M series. Using a new controller technology from Indilinx, the Vertex drive we are previewing offers incredible performance and a more reasonable price per GB. Discussion on the forum.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has unveiled the next major addition to its successful PC MMO, the Ulduar dungeon. As the next step in tiered raid progression in Wrath of the Lich King, Ulduar is set to let players enjoy gorgeous set-pieces, sprawling battlefields, and innovative boss encounters.

AMD's Shareholders approved spinning off manufacturing capacities into The Foundry Company. AMD today announced that its stockholders approved a proposal to issue common stock and warrants to an affiliate of Mubadala Development Company PJSC, paving the way for AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company of Abu Dhabi to create "The Foundry Company".

Nvidia has posted brand new ForceWare drivers yesterday, bringing them up to version 182.06 – these are WHQL and not beta drivers. You’ll find performance tweaks for games such as Fallout 3, F.E.A.R 2, Left 4 Dead, Race Driver: GRID and other specifc bug fixes. Discussion on the forum.

HardOCP get busy with two Nvidia GeForce GTX 295's in Quad SLI. We take a close look at gameplay performance with the GeForce GTX 295 Quad SLI and compare it to Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX. The results may surprise you and make you question whether Quad SLI or CrossFireX are worth investing in for gaming at this time.

X-Bit Labs investigate what performance improvements the latest Nvidia ForceWare 182.06 drivers bring. In our previous mini-review we discussed what advantages the new Catalyst 9.1 driver can bring the owners of ATI Radeon graphics cards. Today its Nvidia’s turn – the company has just officially released a new GeForce driver version 182.06.

Arctic Cooling announced they will be releasing an aftermarket cooler for AMD’s Radeon HD 4870X2 video card. The cooler is equipped with three 92mm PWM fans running from 1,000 to 2,000 RPM, generating 81 CFM airflow. The eight-heatpipe design can achieve 320 Watts cooling capacity. This product will be available by end of March 2009. The MSRP is US$68.30 and 53.95€ (excluding VAT). Discussion on the forum.

A new version of the well know graphics card information tool GPU-Z has now been made available. You can grab the latest version here.

An interesting turn of events took place on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial into alleged copyright infringements. Things took an interesting turn on the second day of the trial, as the prosecution amended its charges against the Pirate Bay, dropping all mention of "complicity in the production of copyrighted material," according to the Local. The charges will now fall mainly in the production of the torrent files, which aid in the spread of the pirated material but have no involvement in the actual soft or hard copies of the copyrighted works.

Fujitsu has officially announced that they are selling their hard disk drive manufacturing business to Toshiba. The transfer between the two companies is expected to be completed in the first quarter of fiscal 2009. The transfer will take place with Fujitsu creating a new company consisting of its HDD-related businesses and functions, which Toshiba will than take an 80-percent stake in. Fujitsu will initially retain a 20-percent stake in the new company to help provide for a smooth transfer, but Toshiba will eventually gain full ownership.

Telstra backs down before court -Telstra has backed down from a fight in court over the legality of its employee collective agreement ballots, despite showing defiance right up to the day of the hearing.

Facebook has performed a massive U-turn over its new TOS, following a furious backlash from the users.Facebook has withdrawn controversial changes to its terms of service after tens of thousands of users complained it infringed on their privacy and copyright. The social-networking site had effectively granted itself the rights to users' photos, wall posts when it deleted a provision on February 4th that said users could remove their content at any time. But they returned to their previous terms of use after more than 25,000 people joined Facebook groups to protest at the retrospective changes, with some threatening to deactivate their accounts.

Cnet has posted Day 2 summary from the GSMA 2009 Mobile World Congress. Another day at GSMA winds to a close, and even though there aren't as many new devices, we did get a few important announcements.

And while we're on the subject of GSMA 2009, one thing that caught my attention was the announcement (and confirmation) by major mobile operators about a new universal charging standard (micro USB) for mobile phones. The goal is to make this universal charging solution (yes, it has an acronym: UCS) the majority interface by 1 January 2012 with their energy efficiency in line with targets set out by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (ditto: OMTP). So who is aboard? The initial group of companies behind the UCS initiative include 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Ars Technica has posted a hands on review of Lenny 5.0. The Debian development community has officially released version 5.0 of the venerable open source Linux distribution. The new version, which is codenamed Lenny, includes updated software, security enhancements, and improved hardware support.

A new Navy funded report warns of War Robots Going "Terminator". Robots gone rogue killing their human masters is rich science fiction fodder, but could it become reality? Some researchers are beginning to ask that question as artificial intelligence advances continue, and the world's high-tech nations begin to deploy war-robots to the battlefront.

Microsoft is determined to catch the Conficker worm author and as a result they are offering a bounty payment of US $250,000. An editor for Hostexploit.com cybercrime research site that goes by the pseudonym ‘Jart Armin’ said that if the Conficker author lives in a part of the world that is soft on cybercrime such as Russia, the Ukraine, or Romania, it could be difficult to get a conviction.

Facebook and MySpace have removed sensitive content about the accused Victorian arsonist, Brendan Sokaluk, who is allegedly responsible for the Churchill-Jerralang fires in Gippsland. Deputy police commissioner for Victoria Kieran Walshe earlier today said the force was enquiring whether blogs and postings on social network sites about Sokaluk could be removed, in line with the ban on publishing certain details about him. "We don't want anything to take place, we don't want anything to be done, that might jeopardise a fair trial down the track," Walshe said.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has officially unveiled the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previewed Windows Mobile 6.5 during his keynote address, and as expected, the updated OS brings a handful of enhancements, including an application store, a backup and restore service, and an improved mobile Web browser. More on this topic in our forum.

From 23rd of February, Telstra will be gradually increasing the maximum speed of its Next G mobile network to 21Mbps and by the end of 2009 to 42Mbps. Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo said the faster speeds would be gradually rolled out for all business customers through March and then made available to consumer customers in April. Telstra would increase the speed to 42 Mbps towards the end of 2009 and in early 2010.

World's largest file sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is set to go on trial in Sweden.To some, The Pirate Bay is evil personified. To others, including its founders, it’s just a service that does nothing wrong. But the truth is about to be hammered out in a Stockholm courtroom as the three men behind the site and a dotcom millionaire who gave money to support The Pirate Bay go on trial for assisting copyright infringement, according to the Guardian. More coverage here and here, thanks Vulkanyaz.

Nevada gaming regulators have issued a general alert to Las Vegas casinos over a new iPhone-based card counting application. An iPhone-based card-counting system recently turned up in a California Indian casino. This new application is causing a lot of fuss, and Nevada gaming regulators have issued a general alert about it, warning Las Vegas casinos about its potential use in game play.

Facebook has recently made changes to their TOS which apparently has left some users "rather disgruntled". The previous Facebook terms of service (TOS) stated that if a user closed his or her Facebook account, rights to original content posted on the profile would eventually expire. The recent TOS changes, however, give Facebook the ability to use uploaded content any way they see fit through an unending and irrevocable license.

Researchers from the University of Illinois claim to have found proof regarding the theory about graphene. Graphene is a hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms and scientists have predicted that the orientation of the atoms along the edges of the lattice would affect the materials electronic properties, but that prediction had not been proven. According to a pair of researchers from the University of Illinois, they have now found the proof needed.

An Audi Dealer has a new holographic virtual assistant in use at Audi Centre in Sydney. The virtual assistant is a life-size virtual construct using 3M's dynamic Vikuti rear projection film and a rear mounted projector. The image is projected onto a 10mm thick chunk of Perspex that becomes a virtual talking person.

Adobe has announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, that in early 2010 Flash Player 10 will be present on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google's Android, Nokia S60/Symbian, and the new Palm operating systems, however, Apple's iPhone is set to miss out. The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones. Adobe executives said that about 40 percent of all phones that are shipped today use this version of its technology. But because Flash Lite doesn't allow for the same functionality as what's available on the Flash 10 desktop version of the technology, mobile users are missing out.

An Australian man has designed and built his own prosthetic arm after doctors told him he wasn't suitable for a prosthesis. "I have the most expensive bolt in Australia in my arm ... it's an $80,000 bolt that gives me back my shoulder function," he said.

LegitReviews have been throwing dry ice at their Phenom II's. AMD showed us that the temperature bug is long gone by running a AMD Phenom II X4 processor at 1.95V and at below -190C, but what can we pull off on our own test bench?

HWZone meanwhile looked at Phenom II performance with DDR3. Do these DDR2/DDR3 compatible CPUs get a performance boost by going DDR3? We find out what DDR3 brings to the table.

Guru3D look at how to use your GPU to accelerate MKV / x.264 playback. How would you like to learn to playback MKV / x.264 content 98% accelerated by your Radeon of GeForce graphics card ? And we'll even go a step further, optimize image quality with the help of your graphics card shader processors?

TweakGuides have a very detailed article covering the process of selecting and building a PC. It's lengthy, and a tad self-indulgent at times, but within lies what I hope to be not only some useful information for those who wish to build a Core i7 system, but also a range of interesting facts and issues to consider for virtually anyone thinking about upgrading their system in the near future.

Joel pointed this article where an ex-EMI director speaks his mind about copyright protection. Now freed from the corporate shackles, Johansen is far more pragmatic about the way the music industry should be working. Speaking to Swedish mag Dagbladet he says he now believes that files sharing does not amount to theft and thinks that the ongoing fight against piracy is useless.

Dopefish noticed there'll be paid videos on YouTube soon. While Google has always given its partners the option to offer downloads of their videos under the Creative Commons license, some of Google's partners will now also be able to charge for their videos.

Sniper spotted this interesting inkless printer from Dell. The special type of photo paper developed by Zink has been embedded with heat-activated colored dye crystals. No doubt the paper is $10 a sheet tho. :)

Super Unix nerds will know that recently Unix time reached 1,234,567,890. "At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890. Where will you be at this momentous second?" - from Bell Labs

PC Perspective looked at long-term SSD performance. For the past few months, we have been putting three Intel X25-M SSDs through their paces in long-term real world usage scenarios. The results were surprising to say the least.

It's been fairly quiet on the PhysX front for a while, but Tech Report checked out how it works in Mirror's Edge. Nvidia's PhysX push has been a bit slow out of the gate, but with Mirror's Edge, we finally have a fresh blockbuster with support for the technology. Keep reading to learn about the visual improvements and performance drawbacks PhysX brings to this title.

iPrimus will start Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's internet filtering trial in late April or early May. The trial, which will run for a period of six weeks, will be opt-in for customers. ISPs have been able to choose their starting dates, according to Andrew Sims, Primus general manager of Marketing & Products, but they must finish the trial by 30 June.

According to Google the Victorian Government has refused to provide data for Google's bushfire map thus limiting its scope to produce a real-time map of all the fires. The Victorian Government's refusal to provide data for Google's bushfire map mash up limited its scope and highlighted glaring problems with Crown copyright provisions, the search giant's top Australian engineer said yesterday.

ZOTAC will soon unveil their latest GTX 295 beast, a water-cooled GeForce GTX 295 Infinity Edition. The new card will be a part of Zotac's new Infinity Edition line up, but the specific clocks for this card aren't finalized as apparently they are still testing. Zotac will show the card at Cebit, but it won't be available before the middle of March. The connectors for the water cooling system are apparently standard, and Zotac will put some adapters for water cooling in a bundle.

I think many of us can relate to this story on how the Web is killing our ability to communicate. Thanks to the Internet, I can't communicate effectively anymore. Before I immersed myself in the world of blogs and vlogs, I communicated with others well. We'd talk about the weather, why the Yankees didn't have the pitching to turn things around last year, and the meaning of life. I'd make an argument, others would listen intently, and understand every word I said. It was great. But now, things are different.

This is almost becoming a weekly ritual for Google with yet another add on released yesterday called Location in Signature. Location in Signature seems like a really basic and sort of more useful version of latitude in that it doesn’t allow the same kind of Facebook-stalking privileges that you get with Latitude. You only share your location with people you email, in other words, people you want to talk to.

The European Commission has allowed Mozilla to take part in an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.Mozilla is not a plaintiff in the case, it is only an "interested third party," which means it will be able to review the statement of objections that was sent to Microsoft last month, as well as provide arguments to the European antitrust regulators and attend a hearing if Microsoft happens to request one.

It would appear that Microsoft has managed to cause more headaches for Xbox360 owners with reports that the mandatory Dashboard update on 3rd of February has caused all sorts of problems.Common problems that users have reported are the system refusing to power on with a "Red Ring of Death," an error code E71 or E74, random freezing in games after varying periods of time and graphical glitches. Microsoft does not give many details about the aforementioned error codes, only that they are caused by "hardware failures."

BlackBerry creator RIM yesterday revealed a couple of new features in its upcoming next-generation BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 platform, code named Argon.At the exclusive press preview in New York this afternoon, RIM demonstrated the new platform, along with new BlackBerry Professional business applications. The firm also revealed new security technologies and the BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS). BlackBerry MVS Server allows companies to link their BlackBerry devices into the corporate phone system to carry out advanced telephony functions.

And speaking of RIM, InsideHW has posted a review of the BlackBerry Curve 8900. New BlackBerry model that was launched by Research In Motion (RIM) in last week of January, belongs to Curve series although it is actually similar to BlackBerry Bold . Maybe there will be someone that won’t agree with the fact that Curve 8900 (also known as Javelin) is better than Bold 9000, Curve 8900 actually has a lot of advantages and new features.

A privately owned satellite and a de-commissioned Russian satellite have collided in space.A U.S. communications satellite reportedly ran into a defunct Russian satellite, which is the first time this type of incident has taken place, a U.S. military spokesperson publicly announced this week. "This is the first, unfortunately," NASA chief scientist for orbital debris Nicholas Johnson said. "Nothing to this extent" has taken place in the past.

Yesterday, communications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced the names of six ISPs which will take part in the Federal Government's internet filtering trial. The tests with the six ISPs announced today will look at the "efficiency and effectiveness" of a range of filtering products that were tested in closed trials at Telstra last year. The tests will also assess how easily the filters are circumvented as well as the impact on internet speeds.

Telstra is expanding their business interests in China, with the news that they had acquired shares in China M and Sharp Point. The telco this morning revealed it had acquired a 67 per cent interest in China M — a mobile content supplier to 350,000 customers daily — and Sharp Point, which provides technical services for China Mobile's mobile music platform. The combined value of the two acquisitions will be $302 million over the next few years.

Only a few weeks ago Intel announced its plans to close manufacturing plants in Southeast Asia and scale back U.S. operations as part of their cost cutting plans, however, today we learn that Intel has plans to invest $7 billion over the next two years to build advanced manufacturing facilities in the US. Intel's investment will be made at existing manufacturing sites in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico and will support some 7,000 jobs at those locations. The company said its total workforce in the U.S. is about 45,000.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has been the subject of security breach, with hackers illegally accessing some 45,000 employee records. It's unknown when the data breach took place and when the FAA first learned of it, but up to 45,000 people may have had their personal information compromised. Although there have been a number of data breaches lately, there is higher scrutiny if a government agency is successfully accessed by hackers.

Word on the street is that Apple may base their new MacBook and MacBook Por units on the 32nm Arrandale Core i7's. It is highly probable that Apple will base new MacBook and MacBook Por units on 32nm Arrandale Core i7's. With 2 cores and able to process 4 threads, the new MacBook models will be able to save even more power, thanks to the smaller fabrication process as well as optimized processor features.

University of Colorado's Silicon Flatirons center in Boulder Colorado, is hosting a conference on the future of the Internet. Academics and policy makers gather in Boulder, Colorado to debate the future of Internet regulation. When it comes to network neutrality, some want rules now, but Verizon's CTO and others argue that government should focus on "real" problems, not crazy hypotheticals.

Apparently cyber crooks are setting traps on the news sharing site Digg.The crims are posing as Digg members and then providing links to bogus online video in comments posted in forums. Digg members chat about stories in accompanying online forums and it is normal for people to stick links to other news stories and videos. The usual technique is for the cyber-frauds post comments claiming to have links to video of starlets having sex or stars getting into trouble.

Rumours of an entry level iPhone and a 3rd generation revision of iPhone just wont go away. While Apple has said more than a couple of times that they don’t want to play in the entry level cell phone market space, it seems that the rumour that will not die is back in full force again, claiming that Apple will launch a new stripped-down iPhone as well as an updated third generation high end iPhone in the June or July time frame.

The Red Cross have said best way to get involved with supporting the bushfire victims is to donate money directly. The 2009 Victorian Bushfire Fund to assist individuals and communities affected by devastating bushfires in Victoria has been launched by the Premier John Brumby in partnership with Red Cross and the Federal Government. An independent panel made up of community leaders will oversee the appeal Fund's operation. Here's some other ideas:

Meanwhile people are suggesting we scrap the internet filter idea and send the money to the bushfire victims instead. The announcement of Internet Safety Day -- like the internet filtering plan -- proved unpopular with members of Australia's online community, with the Twitter micro-blogging service full of repeated calls for the government to scrap the filter and give the $44 million to bushfire survivors.

Apparently the French Navy were left with planes unable to download flight plans after an attack by the Conflicker virus. Naval officials said the "infection"' was probably due more to negligence than a deliberate attempt to compromise French national security. It said it suspected someone at the navy had used an infected USB key.

Sniper spotted this dual screen laptop. Seems to be a blog for a prototype by the company, but it's an interesting idea. We are moving forward with our TITAN M-1 dual screen workstation. This DUO 15.4 workstation is a ruggedized version of our G400 dual-screen laptop. This product is being built specifically to specs requested by the US NAVY for extreme environments.

Windows 7 UAC flaws and how to fix them -A number of security flaws have been found in Windows 7's streamlined UAC—flaws that Windows Vista is immune to—prompting a series of surprising responses from Microsoft. We take a look at what the flaws are, and what's being done about them.

Windows 7 Editions Compared, With Table of Features -With its new "Russian Doll" model of linearly progressing features, Microsoft thinks its new lineup of six editions will meet a wide range of consumer usage models. All versions of Windows 7 include Internet Explorer 8 and DirectX 11, as well as improved multi-core processing. With improved boot times and overall system responsiveness through all versions, Microsoft believes these engineering investments will allow small netbook PCs to run any version of Windows 7, and allow customers the flexibility to purchase a system which meets their needs.

Vodafone and 3 to merge Aussie operations - Vodafone and Hutchison Telecommunications, which delivers 3 mobile services, have today announced that they will merge their Australian operations in a 50:50 joint venture. The new venture, still subject to shareholder vote to be taken by April, will be named VHA Pty Limited. The products of the venture will be marketed under the Vodafone brand and will be chaired by Vodafone's CEO Asia-Pacific and Middle East region Nick Read. Hutchison Australia CEO Nigel Dews will become the venture's CEO.

Jobs to go in Voda, 3 merger -There will be redundancies from the Vodafone-Hutchison plan to fuse Australian operations according to an internal memo to employees today from Hutchison Australia CEO Nigel Dews. "Today nothing changes, but as we bring together companies with similar functions doing similar things unfortunately there will be some duplication," Dews said in the memo to workers for Hutchison's Australian mobile brand 3.

Kaspersky denies leaks after SQL hack -Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs' US website was hacked over the weekend exposing the company's customer database, but Kaspersky has denied data was compromised and says the vulnerability wasn't critical. An unidentified hacker reported over the weekend that he was able to access a complete profile of the company's databases, revealing its clients' names, activation codes, list of bugs the company tracks, and client email addresses.

Bushfires, floods wreak telco havoc -"The bushfires and the floods will require a massive multi-million dollar Telstra recovery effort to rebuild our networks," Trujillo said in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in Perth today. He believed the bill could run into the tens of millions. The labour cost of the almost 200 people working in the two states alone tallies up to $2 million, the chief executive said.

Core i7 950 and 975 to replace 940 and 965 -According to sources in the Taiwan motherboard industry, Intel plans to update its Core i7 processor lineup next quarter with two new models, the Core i7 950 and Core i7 Extreme 975. These models will essentially replace the Core i7 940 and Core i7 Extreme 965 at higher clock speeds, a new stepping revision, and the same respective price points.

Toshiba announces new FeRAM prototype -Toshiba has announced that it has developed a new FeRAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory) prototype which it claims is the world fastest and highest density non-volatile memory. Although the chip is only a mere 128 Megabit (16MB) in size, it has some very impressive performance figures, as it achieves read and write speeds of 1.6GB/s.

I'm a little late reporting this one, but there's a few (p)reviews of NVIDIA's ION Platform out and about. The NVIDIA® ION™ platform, the combination of NVIDIA® GeForce® 9400 and Intel’s Atom CPU, transforms traditional Atom-based PC designs into a premium PC experience. Discover affordable new designs that are small in size but big in performance.

From Junglist: Good Game, the show for Gamers by Gamers returns to a screen near you on Monday night – in a the new time slot of 8.30pm on ABC2 and late on Friday nights on ABC1.

Good Game aims to bringing Australian gamers the latest gaming news, reviews, developer interviews and analysis of gamer culture. This time around, hosts Bajo & Junglist will be running all year, handing out rubber chickens for 43 straight weeks!

As usual I can find no press release on their website, but it seems AMD have unveiled the Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720BE CPUs today. People are calling these "the real Phenom II" because they natively use the AM3 socket (but will work in AM2+ boards). This of course allows them to use DDR3 memory which should presumably let them really stretch their legs.

A few people pointed out that OCAU members dominated the recent AMD Xbox360 competition. We were guaranteed one winner, but we ended up with three of the five Xbox360's. :) Nice work! The winning entries were:

Why AMD ? You would have to be an Nvidiot with a small Intelect to think otherwise! AMD = Genius – D. Budd (OCAU)

If I had an AMD game system I could actually play real games, instead of being limited to playing online scrabble and runescape! – K. Aoya (Gotgames)

With the Dragon in my Machine, I’d have the fire to burn up the competition – M. Lake (OCAU)

For Overclocking with AMD “If it isn’t on fire, It can go even higher!” – G. Taylor (OCAU)

So, congrats to those guys. But now the big prizes are on offer, with 5 AMD Dragon powered PC's up for grabs.

Simply Enter the competition here and write a 25 word or less slogan for the new Dragon Platform. To be eligible for the guaranteed OCAU prize, please make sure you select OCAU from the drop down "where did you hear about us" tab on the entry form. The Competition will run until March 31st and the winners will be announced early April!

Finally, remember that the Australian qualifiers for Gigabyte's Overclocking Championship will be hosted in Sydney soon. Winners will be flown to Thailand for the Pan-Asia qualifier for the World Championships. It will also be a great opportunity for a meet up for all Australian overclockers and tech enthusiasts. Prizes and free beer will be provided. More info in this thread.

Remember to keep an eye our on Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our many sponsors have special offers and deals on media players, laptops, netbooks, office chairs, web hosting and a range of PC components. There's even dietary supplements. :)

As most of you would have seen from various media broadcasts, Victoria is currently reeling from the worst bushfire season that Australia has seen in decades. Over the course of the past 36 hours at least 66 people have died and at least 300 people have been admitted to hospitals around Melbourne, 75 of whom are suffering from severe burns. The firestorm that has gripped the state has also completely destroyed the communities of Kingslake and Marysville, while other towns within those two areas and some Melbourne suburbs have come under serious threat as well. In total, over 500 houses have been lost within those two communities alone, with the Victorian Country Fire Authority and the Department of Sustainability and the Environment predicting that these figures will rise due to weather conditions in the coming days. Other Emergency Services have also predicted that the death toll from this tragedy will rise as Firefighters and other Emergency staff are able to gain access to areas previously inaccessable due to the fires.

These events have also touched members of the OCAU community, with forum regulars such as AERO, daztay and Power47 amongst others having family members who have either lost property, had their homes under threat or have been lucky to escape with their lives during this time. I think that I can say with certainty that our thoughts and prayers are with these guys and anyone else who is involved with these fires for the days ahead, including the various Emergency Services personnel who have given made a heroic effort in order to bring this situation under control and save lives.

As a result of numerous OCAU members asking how they can help, I have compiled a list of various charities, businesses and relief organisations which have established Appeals in order to help the various survivors of this tragedy. Due to the severity of the bushfires, these funds will benefit the communities affected immensely, so please give generously over the days and weeks ahead.

In conjunction with this, the Red Cross Blood Bank will also require an increased level of blood donations over the course of the days, weeks and months ahead. These blood donations will go towards not only the burns victims of the recent fires, but the other people who require blood transfusions on a regular basis in order to survive. Due to the various components that can be extracted, one blood donation can help to save at least six lives, so please visit your local Blood Banks to see how you can help out.

I have also compiled a list of radio webstreams, information links and hotlines for people to utilise. Due to the high level of traffic hitting these facilities, please only utilise the CFA, DSE and Bushfire Information Hotline resources if you have friends, family or loved ones presently residing within the areas presently under threat from these fires.

Anandtech have posted a Core i7 buyers' guide. This Core i7 Buyers Guide looks at three different i7 builds that you might consider. The Core i7 is high on the performance tree but it is also expensive compared to other solutions. Not everyone can afford the $2000 Core i7 system presented in the $1000 to $2000 Buyers Guide. For builders who want an i7 system for as little money as possible we put together a Core i7 Entry system.

The end of Windows XP is nigh. In 10 weeks, Microsoft Corp. will begin to retire Windows XP by shifting the seven-year-old OS into a more limited support plan. Windows XP, Microsoft's most successful operating system ever, will leave what the company calls "mainstream support" on April 14, and enter "extended support."

Microsoft have jumped into gossip magazine territory. Wonderwall.com is a joint venture between MSN, the internet arm of the US software giant, and BermanBraun Interactive, a media company based in Santa Monica, California. "Wonderwall offers people an engaging and visually dynamic perspective on the day's hottest pop culture stories, personalities and trends," MSN and BermanBraun said in a statement. The main feature of Wonderwall.com is a nearly full-screen wall of pictures with links to stories, photo galleries and video.

Apple may be extending the iPhone lineup. Three new iPhones will appear in 2009, according to an analyst with the Canadian research firm Canaccord Adams. According to a report on Seeking Alpha, analyst Peter Misek identifies the most lavish of the three as a 32GB iPhone 3G that will be available in multiple colors - an iPod Nanofication of the iPhone's bling level, in effect.

OLPC is inviting manufacturers to copy their design. Speaking at the TED 2009 conference, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the future of the initiative--which set out to put simple, durable, low-cost laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations--is to become, in essence, more commonplace, to "build something that everyone copies," according to Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from TED.

The Pirate Bay is demanding larger public access to their trial. Set to start in just a few days time, the trial of The Pirate Bay will be one of the most important cases the file-sharing community has ever witnessed. However, due to restrictions, the number of people viewing it first hand could be very limited indeed. “Time to make demands,” says Peter Sunde.

Dell have joined the fight against breast cancer. It slipped under the radar this past week, but Dell and Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced a partnership that'll see Dell donate $5 to the foundation for every new Promise Pink laptop it sells. Most of Dell's line is available in the new hue.

Some news scraps to catch up on - hopefully no duplicates with earlier posts. Speaking of which, OCAU received its 10 millionth post recently!

Acid has written more about the online games legal minefield in NSW. Basically, World of Warcraft etc are being sold without age classificiations because the industry believes they are exempt from the classification requirement, but it turns out the NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos does not agree. In fact, the NSW Police are enouraging people to report retailers selling WoW and similar games. Once again we seem determined to make ourselves look like the slow cousins of the online world.

Speaking of online games, players of Eve Online, the big spaceship alliance MMORPG, are reeling after a massive betrayal and shift of power within the game. So what, you say? Well, the real-world value of stuff lost by the affected guild is in the region of $8M USD apparently, so it is kind've a big deal. This event is now the most significant coup in Eve history, not because of the money lost, but because the disbanding of an alliance means that all its defensive infrastructure lies exposed.

There's now a mobile version of Google Book Search. Bizarrely enough I have the comedian Stephen Fry to thank for that info. Thanks Stephen, more QI please. And if you see John Lloyd please ask him to make another season of The Museum of Curiosity. Ta.

Bill Gates has released more bugs - this time, mosquitoes. "There is more money put into baldness drugs than into malaria," Gates quipped, triggering laughter. "Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted. That is why that priority has been set."

A security expert has shown how easy it is to clone RFID passports simply by being near someone with one. During a recent 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, it successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners.

JimX wants the world to know there's a newish version of OCCT Perestroïka, a CPU stability testing program. Seems to specialise in heating/stressing specific things like CPU, GPU, PSU etc.

Porsche recently unveiled their new 435bhp GT3. I only mention this coz I had a birthday recently and it's not too late for gifts. For the 2010 model year, the GT3 has been given more power, better handling, and a slightly higher base price. Discussion here.

The USA are building the fastest computer on the planet.. again. For nuclear stuff.. again. IBM estimates that the computing power of the Sequoia system will be greater than that of every one of the current systems on the Top 500 supercomputer rankings combined. Crikey.

Or, you could build one yourself, like this guy. Bruce Allen is perhaps the world's best do-it-yourselfer. When he needed a supercomputer to crunch the results of gravitational-wave research, he built one with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Matt spotted this article with the power consumption figures for 106 video cards in various configurations. The top models demand between 110 and 270 watts from the power supply; in fact, a powerful graphics card under full load requires as much power as the rest of the components of a PC system combined.

iiNet had its first hearing on Friday where Justice Dennis Cowdroy asked the AFACT counsel Christian Dimitriadis to lay out the key issues of the case. The three issues he then identified to be in question were whether iiNet authorises the acts of infringement, whether it was not liable if its customers infringed on copyright, and whether the Safe Harbour provisions of the Copyright Act would protect it against needing to carry out actions such as cutting off infringing customers.

Germany says "nein" to three-strikes infringement plan.While some countries are eager to implement a "three strikes" Internet piracy law, others are slowly backing away into the dugout. German lawmakers sat down privately with ISPs to talk about a proposed P2P policy that would take repeat filesharing offenders offline, but both sides have agreed that the policy's methods would be at odds with the country's privacy laws.

Opera has created a new JavaScript engine called Carakan which it says will be the fastest engine on the market.According to a report over on CNet, Opera is planning a replacement for the Futhark JavaScript engine that featured in the build of Opera 10 Alpha that was tested as part of ZDNet's benchmark suite with a shiny new engine dubbed Carakan – and it should boost the performance considerably.

Lavalys has launched a new version of their popular PC diagnostic and benchmarking tool, Everest 5.0. The new Everest 5.0 brings an improved hardware monitoring module with new "Alerting" feature, support for OpenGL 3.0, support for Windows 7, extended audio information including OpenAL and High Definition Audio information, new information for installed Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, and GPGPU devices information for ATI Stream and nVidia CUDA.

techPowerUp has posted first pictures of Intel's LGA-1155, 1156, 1157 and Ibex-Peak platform motherboard. Intel's mainstream market implementation of the Nehalem architecture will come in the form of monolithic quad-core a dual-core chips that have northbridge machinery integrated. Based on the Lynnfield, Clarkesfield (quad-core) and Arandale (dual-core) designs, Intel will place the processors on a common system design dubbed the "Ibex-Peak".

The Inquirer posted an article in which they claim that Sony will ditch nVidia for Intel's Larrabee GPU for their next gen console, however, a report on TechRadar says otherwise.Sony Computer Entertainment has moved quickly to deny the latest rumours that Intel will be producing the graphics processing unit (GPU) for the PlayStation 4.

Microsoft has launched a new entertainment and celebrity news website called Wonderwall. Wonderwall.com is a joint venture between MSN, the internet arm of the US software giant, and BermanBraun Interactive, a media company based in Santa Monica, California. "Wonderwall offers people an engaging and visually dynamic perspective on the day's hottest pop culture stories, personalities and trends," MSN and BermanBraun said in a statement.

F-Script: Command-line Cocoa shell goes beta. Fun Script, also known as F-Script, is a command-line based interactive Cocoa shell. The open source F-Script offers a new way to create and interact with Cocoa objects using a simple scripting language and a Smalltalk-like development environment. Recently, the F-Script shell went beta, providing a new way to interactively build Cocoa.

Google's new Latitude application has been strongly criticised by the privacy groups. Privacy watchdogs have strongly criticised Google's new Latitude software, which pinpoints the location of mobile phone users anywhere in the world. Touted as a means for friends and family to stay in touch, Latitude could easily be abused by as a way of spying on people and keeping track of their movements.

Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak has joined a new start-up company, Fusion-io. The three-year-old company, based in Salt Lake City, is expected to announce Thursday that Mr. Wozniak, already a member of Fusion-io’s advisory board, will become its chief scientist. “I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,” Mr. Wozniak said in an interview. “In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.”

Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has attacked the Rudd Government for spending extraordinary amounts of taxpayers’ dollars on websites.The most expensive, a Veterans' Affairs site that includes details of how to plan a trip to Gallipoli, was created at a cost $250,000. A site to communicate developments in accounting standard setting was created at a cost of $180,000, while another on collections and activities at the National Portrait Gallery cost $141,358. The much maligned Grocery Choice website cost $118,332 to create.

According to Nvidia, sales of their new GeForce 3D Vision 3D glasses are going through the roof.The boom in sales comes after the release of the World of Warcraft v3.0.8 patch, which adds support for the 3D glasses.

There is a new accessory for the PlayStation 3 called PS3 HD Plus PHE-01 which is an eSATA adapter that latches to the bottom the console to allow for external SATA hard disk connectivity and essentially unlimited storage capacity.

Electronic Frontiers Australia member Geordie Guy has apparently received a death threat. A DEATH threat has been made against a vocal opponent of the Federal Government’s web filtering plan in a grim escalation of the already heated debate. Online rights campaigner Geordie Guy received a threatening phone message last month after publicly disagreeing with an article supporting the filtering scheme. Thanks to Bundy for this story.

Nvidia will again play the re-naming game by officially re-naming the GeForce 9800GTX+ to GeForce GTS 250. The G92 Series will be officially renamed next month. According to our source, NVIDIA will announce the “new” GeForce GTS 250 graphics card on the first Tuesday of March when Cebit 2009 opens. The following is what NV says to its partners. “GeForce GTS 250 carries over the same specs and features of 9800 GTX+, and hence the same GPU, memory, board, PCB, and thermal solution. AIC’s should be confident in purchasing GPU’s, PCB’s, and other materials, since the only change is a new VBIOS to implement the new branding”

It seems that the price of DRAM has increased over the past week on the Asian market and the short term outlook isn't good with the news that a major DRAM manufacture, Qimonda has filed for bankruptcy.The price of 1Gb DDR2 667 MHz DRAM chips already increased 16-percent last week, with average prices for all DRAM capacities rising by as much as 8.7-percent during that time. The worst may yet still come however as prices are further increasing this week as brokers and traders in Taiwan and China return from a week long Lunar New Year holiday.

News isn't much better for the CPU industry with reports that shipments of x86 CPUs declined by 18% between the third of fourth quarter of 2008.For the year, Intel gained market share, going from a 77.1 percent hold in 2007 to 80.4 percent in 2008. Via also went up 0.8 to 1.1 percent. That increase in market share from both companies had to come at the expense of AMD, which fell from 22.1 percent to 18.5 percent.

Here's an interesting article about the difference between ACP and TDP. In many ways, ACP is an arbitrary definition conjured up by AMD which no other player within the industry has accepted. Instead, the big industry players like Intel, Sun, HP and IBM have settled on the suite of SPECpower benchmarks run by a committee of industry players hailing from all those firms and even AMD. This, for the most part, promotes TDP (Thermal Design Power), a measurement Intel favours and which AMD considers inherently biased.

Monty Widenius, MySQL founder has resigned from Sun Microsystems.Monty Widenius, the original author of the MySQL database server, has resigned from Sun Microsystems after months of protracted discussions about his career. In a blog post, Widenius cited the botched release of MySQL 5.1 as the motivation for him to offer his immediate resignation back in August 2008.

On February 16th Australia will be getting their first Android phone known as G1. Optus has, as expected, been the first carrier to jump on the device as the founding partner. There will be four Optus plans. The cheapest option will be the "yes" $59 internet cap with $350 included calls and texts as well as 500MB data. There is an additional handset charge of $51 per month for a 12-month contract and $51 per month for a 24-month contract.Optus plans: iPhone vs. Android

Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has had a victory with The Federal Senate passing a motion which forces the Rudd Government to release the NBN reports from the ACCC and the expert panel. "This is about ensuring the Rudd Government is accountable and the Australian public are properly informed about a project which puts at risk $4.7 billion of taxpayers' money," he said.

Intel confirms 8-core, 16-thread Nehalem-based Xeon processor.Unfortunately for those licking their lips at the prospect of 64-thread performance in a four-processor setup, Intel didn't go into any further detail. All we know thus far is that four of Intel's 17 papers will reveal further details when the ISSCC kicks off on Monday February 8th.

Lian Li has unveiled their new aluminium mid-tower case, the PC-A06F.The 187 x 375 x 490 mm PC-A06F case weighs 3.8kg and features tool-less installation for optical drives and PCI cards and comes with a rather weird PSU placement. According to what we can see from the picture The PSU is placed directly over the CPU heatsink, which might interfere with some tall heatsinks.

A quick update - firstly, congrats to OCAU member 192.168.0.1 who has scored himself the free LCD TV from BuyOrBid.

We'll find out soon who won the Xbox360 from AMD, but in the meantime, they have 5 firebreathing PCs to give away this time. Once again, they have guaranteed that an OCAU member will win one!

OCAU and AMD are giving you another chance to win some great prizes with this month’s competition. AMD are giving OCAU users a chance to win 1 of 5 Complete Dragon Based PC including the latest Phenom II Processor, 4800 Series GFX card and 790 Chipset Motherboard.

Simply Enter the competition here(warning, loud annoying music) and write a 25 word or less slogan for the new Dragon Platform. To be eligible for the guaranteed OCAU prize, please make sure you select OCAU from the drop down "where did you hear about us" tab on the entry form. The Competition will run until March 31st and the winners will be announced early April!

Finally, remember that the Australian qualifiers for Gigabyte's Overclocking Championship will be hosted in Sydney soon. Winners will be flown to Thailand for the Pan-Asia qualifier for the World Championships. It will also be a great opportunity for a meet up for all Australian overclockers and tech enthusiasts. Prizes and free beer will be provided. More info in this thread.

The company behind the BlackBerry Smartphone, Research in Motion (RIM) has opened a new headquarters in North Sydney. Indeed Canadian-based Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the smartphone BlackBerry Bold, Curve, Pearl and Storm handsets, has in fact yesterday opened a new regional headquarters in North Sydney to serve its customers in Australia and New Zealand.

According to Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha, Windows Mobile 7 will be out in 2010. In answering an analyst's question during the Q&A portion of his company's earnings call, Jha said: "Yes, we are still committed to Windows Mobile. As you know, Windows 6 series is available in 2009 and as compared to Android, we believe in 2009 Android is more competitive; more of our effort and focus in 2009 is going to Android, but in 2010 when Windows 7 will become available, we will then participate in a more focused way in Windows Mobile 7 in 2010."

NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said that World of Warcraft is illegal in NSW because the NSW Classification Enforcement Act prohibits publishers and retailers from selling unclassified computer games, WoW being one game that hasn't been clasified. WoW is sold as boxed sets in retail stores without classification by the Classification Board or the appropriate labeling, for instance M or MA15+ on the basis that it is an internet game.

Toshiba has announced a new smartphone which is said to rival iPhone.Announcing its most impressive move into the smartphone market to date, the Japanese company has really stepped up its game today unveiling the 'TG01' - a 9.9mm thick handset with a huge 4.1in WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display.

Sun has released a 64-bit Java Plug-In.Java 6 Update 12 will finally have a 64-bit plug-in, a feature that was first requested in January of 2003, as well as a 64-bit version of Webstart. Java Webstart enables the deployment of standalone Java software applications over a network or the internet.

Nikon has Unveiled a 'Time-Traveling' Camera.The 12.1-megapixel Nikon Coolpix P90's secret is that it's always shooting. When a user presses the shutter release button, it will save the previous ten photos that were automatically shot. The ten photos will only be 3-megapixel captures.

Anandtech is having a look at the performance of NVIDIA's Ion Platform. As much as I can appreciate beauty, what truly matters here is what’s on the inside and that’s what NVIDIA gave me the opportunity to do over this past week. If you haven’t already seen it, what I’m talking about is NVIDIA’s Ion reference platform. In a nutshell it’s Intel’s Atom processor paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M chipset.

MUSHKIN has unveiled their new DDR3 triple-channel kit that will come with a unique “radioactive” heatspreader. “This kit is the ultimate combination of newest technology and fancy design.” Proclaims Steffen Eisenstein, CEO of Mushkin Logistic GmbH very proudly, and continues: “The response for the “radioactive” heatspreader was huge, now we will have a hell of a party on DDR3!”

OCAU's Folding@Home team has been working hard this summer, but we still need your help. While the team has been contributing over 1.6 Million points per day, we still need your help to increase this number to stop us falling behind during this summer season.

The team is looking for Nvidia GeForce 8XXX, 9XXX and 260/28X/295 GPU's (ATI GPU's Too!) to help increase our output. If you are ready to start, then check out this thread for instructions. Don't have a GPU to spare? Folding@Home works on your CPU as well! There's a guide to getting started here. If you have Sony Playstation 3 you should already have the client pre-installed and ready for you to start producing!

So, if you would like to help scientists learn about diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta - possibly help find a cure for it and put OCAU back in the number one spot - then drop by the Distributed Computing section and see how you can be a part of it. Remember OCAU is Team 24!

Well, 3 people have sent me these pics now, so I'd better post them! Thanks to Lil, James and Allen for these. :)

At home in Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat. It’s just scorching weather and it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering.

Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!

IBM is building a new supercomputer. The most recent list of the Top 500 supercomputers, published in November 2008, included the first ever Petaflop systems - capable of performing more than 1 quadrillion floating point operations per second. Now we hear that the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has ordered a supercomputer that will be able to deliver 20 times that performance by 2012.

Microsoft has confirmed Windows 7 will have six versions. Looking to answer complaints about the proliferation of Windows flavors, Microsoft Corp. said today that it will generally deploy two primary versions of Windows 7, although it will still offer six editions for sale. The two main editions will be Windows 7 Home Premium for consumers and Windows 7 Professional for business users.

Google's internet bus is touring India. When you spend all of your workday bloggin' it's easy to lose sight of the fact that some folks don't have access to basic utilities, or HDTV, or -- the horror! -- the Internet itself. In the time-honored tradition of Hippies and earnest seekers alike, Google will be heading to rural India, where they will be focusing their philanthropic endeavors (or perhaps their shrewd marketing endeavors) for the next month and a half.

Myspace has removed the accounts of 90,000 sex offenders. In a statement, Mr Blumenthal said the "shocking revelation" backed up his campaign to ensure that social networking sites should be barred as "playgrounds for predators". "Almost 100,000 convicted sex offenders mixing with children on MySpace is absolutely appalling and totally unacceptable. For every one of them, there may be hundreds of others using false names and ages." Mr Blumenthal said the new data unmasked what he called MySpace's "monstrously inadequate counter-measures".

Apparently, one in three broadband users is a pirate. Every other month a new survey pops up, and they all seem to draw the same conclusion: millions of people worldwide download files from filesharing networks such as BitTorrent - and they don’t think this is morally wrong.

And nearly half of all Australians think piracy is OK. Apparently 45 per cent of Australians think that, in some cases, it is OK to use pirated software. Firstly, that’s not yet half of the Aussies used in the survey, and secondly, it states “in some cases”. So when you think about it, for the amount of pirated software out there and the amount of bittorrent sites around, it’s not a bad result that 55 per cent of Australians wouldn’t use pirated software in any circumstance.

Microsoft believes Halo is the next Star Wars. Halo Studio lead producer Jason Pace has told VideoGamer.com that Microsoft sees the Halo franchise as its Star Wars, and hopes it will become just as prevalent in pop culture as the George Lucas conceived phenomenon. "We as a studio view Halo as our Star Wars," Pace told VideoGamer.com at a recent London press event. "We want it to become that culturally pervasive."

Tiny magnetic tornadoes could revolutionise digital storage. Treasure this fine example of scientific press release bilge: "At the human scale, the tightly wrapped spinning columns of air in a tornado contain terrifying destructive power that ravages communities. At the nanoscale, however, closely coiled magnetic vortices hold the promise of a new generation of computers." These vortices are described as 'infinitesimal magnetic tornadoes.'"

Whoever said mobile phones couldn't kill you. A Chinese man has died after an exploding cell phone apparently severed his carotid artery, according to reports from China. The local Chinese paper Shin Min Daily is reporting on the victim, thought to be a computer shop clerk in his twenties. One of the man's coworkers said both were in the store together, when she heard a loud bang, and turned to find the victim lying in a pool of blood.

Google has released version 5.0 Beta of Google Earth. The new version has introduced a range of new features, the most talked about being its new underwater view. It also allows you to see the surface of the earth change over time and now explore Mars.

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, it seems that eBaumsWorld, a website often accused of stealing content from creators for their own profit, has been bought out - and Mr Eric Bauman and Co have been uncermoniously fired. I guess the reason I am so upset with this is not because we were fired, but how we were fired. We've ran this company for 11 years and we were treated with zero respect. Worst of all, they provided us with NO real reason why we were all terminated.

Google have explained that human error over the weekend caused every page on Google become flagged as potentially dangerous. Google was quick to correct the problem, which is not related to any activist group saying that the internet in general is dangerous. If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

Also in Google news, Gmail has been extended to be available offline to users, using the Google Gears extension. Joyce Sohn, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, noted in a company blog post that the updated service would allow users to read, write and archive e-mail messages while flying in an airplane. Using this technology, Google can really call this service an email client. Previously, users had to be online to be able to do anything to their mail. Now, just like in Outlook and Thunderbird, users can queue messages to send emails at a later date. However, I'm yet to work out when I'm not online, let alone on an airplane without wireless.

The sacred union of Adobe Flash and Apple's iPhone, even with the continuous begging and prodding from the tech savvy from around the world, with promises of flowers and choclates upon their engagement, seems never to be. "It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen told Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Collaborating they may be, but Steve Jobs, Apple's "father" and mentor, never thought that Flash was good enough for his little baby.

Today's timewaster comes from Professor Erno Rubik, creator of the Rubik's Cube. His new logical puzzle is the Rubic 360, a three-dimensional puzzle that will be officially released in Germany on Feburary 5th. But I'm sure someone can find a prerelease version of the new craze somewhere. How do you transfer toys over the internet again?

BTW, if you liked this news post from glasnt, you can hear more from her in the recent unofficial episode 28 of the OCAU Podcast.

If you’re one of those people who would like to drink more water during the day but can never remember and/or aren't motivated enough to do so, here's a product which might just help you with that; HydraCoach Intelligent Water Bottle.It’s essentially a water bottle with a computer right in, allowing you to track everything from basic figures (like how much you’ve slurped down in a day,) to much more complex stats (like how many ounces per hour you’ve taken in). You can even get it to calculate a personal hydration goal for the day based on your weight, and have the bottle show you how close you are to achieving it.

According to The Wall St Journal Dell is jumping on the smartphone bandwagon.Dell Inc., aiming to rev up sales as its mainstay personal-computer business struggles in the recession, is preparing a move into cellphones as early as next month, said people familiar with the matter.

A team of researchers from Cambridge University is close to finishing a design for a solid state lighting bulb capable of lasting 60 years. The university has produced a new design which costs a mere $2.85 USD and despite being the size of a penny, produces similar light to a fluorescent bulb while lasting over four times as long with a lifetime of 60 years. The new design triples fluorescent bulb efficiency and is 12 times more efficient than incandescent designs. Also, it’s capable of instantaneous illumination, so the light lag associated with fluorescent bulbs may soon be a thing of the past.

Apparently there is a grim outlook for new IT projects if this report is anything to go by.The grim economic outlook has caused CIOs to withhold budgets, ditch new projects and cut back on contractors, according to technology analyst firm Longhaus' Australian Technology Index for the first quarter of 2009.

US biologists are excited by the prospect that current restrictions on human embryonic stem cells might be over turned under President Obama. President Obama's promise to restore science to its rightful place has raised the hopes of biologists that there will be swift action on what many view as a serious hindrance to biology: restrictions on the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).

Microsoft adds fancy search option for Firefox.If you had any doubts Microsoft didn't appreciate the advantages of Firefox's ability to accommodate add-ons, you can dispel them now. The company just released one that makes Microsoft's search service work better with the open-source Web browser.

It appears that Facebook has finally found a way to profit from its huge database of users by creating one of the world's largest market research databases.In an attempt to finally monetise the social networking site, once valued at $15bn (£10.4bn), it will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products.

Cybercrime is rising sharply according to experts. The threat of cybercrime is rising sharply, experts have warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called for a new system to tackle well-organised gangs of cybercriminals. Online theft costs $1 trillion a year, the number of attacks is rising sharply and too many people do not know how to protect themselves, they said.

Google is said to be working on a network diagnostic system called Measurement Lab , which will enable users to detect filters on different traffic types. According to Internet Service Providers, controlling the flow of certain traffic types is necessary to ensure adequate service for their customers. This reasoning doesn't go down too well with proponents of network neutrality. Google is backing a network diagnostic system called Measurement Lab which includes a series of tests aimed at detecting throttling of certain traffic types, as well as determining possible causes for poor connection speeds.

Last week Samsung has announced that it has developed the world’s highest density DRAM chip.Using its 50 nm technology, Samsung has made the world’s first 4 Gb DDR3 DRAM chip. "We have leveraged our strength in innovation to develop the first 4Gb DDR3, in leading the industry to higher DRAM densities," said Kevin Lee, vice president, technical marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

The Victorian Government is providing school students with 10,400 netbook-style laptops from Lenovo and Acer. The netbooks will be delivered to students in years five through to eight, and students will be allowed to take them home after school. Parents will be given the option to purchase the netbooks after the trial, which will last for three years.

Sapphire has introduced a new AM3 motherboard under the name of PC-AM2RS790G or the PURE CrossFireX 790GX.As we're sure that you've figured out by now, this motherboard uses the 790GX chipset from AMD and it has the SB750 southbridge. The board supports AM2+ and AM3 processors and DDR2 memory. As the chipset feature integrated graphics, Sapphire has gone with 128MB of sideband memory for those interested in using it or running hybrid CrossFire.

Intel is planning to release a D0 revision of its highly popular Core i7 920 chip on 2nd of March. Enthusiasts need not worry though, as there is literally no difference in specifications of any kind - the difference is only cosmetic. Basically, the serial number on the chip package will be removed from the ink swatch to reduce a potential risk of the IHS cosmetically overlapping it. There is no change to the ULT matrix content which continues to contain the serial number.

The University of California in Berkeley is set to offer a course in StarCraft.According to the course description, students will "go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game Starcraft." The course also recommends that its students be familiar with Calculus and Differential Equations. Also, "the class will take the theoretical into the practical world by analyzing games and replays to reinforce decision-making skills and advanced Starcraft theory."

Apparently Intel is already in the process of designing their entire 22nm generation of CPU's. We have confirmed that Intel engineers are working on 22nm stuff and as you can imagine, it should have more cache, more cores and end up faster than anything we have today.